


Eight Ball

by rabbit_hearted



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Just Good Wholesome Fun, kimiko tries to swindle frenchie and fails because hes too much of a simp for it to work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:07:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27389218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbit_hearted/pseuds/rabbit_hearted
Summary: Kimiko just wanted to make a quick buck. She didn't expect her hapless victim to be so damnendearing.
Relationships: The Female | Kimiko Miyashiro/The Frenchman
Comments: 18
Kudos: 59





	Eight Ball

**Author's Note:**

> This exists because my swindler Kimiko head-canon stuck its claws in me and wouldn't let go.

He leaned against the bar in a cocksure sort of way, one hand curled around a sweaty gin and tonic, the other pressed into his pocket. He was wearing a Wu Tang Clan t-shirt that’d seen better days and a lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, and that was how she knew she’d found her next target. 

The giggly bartender was hopelessly enraptured by him. He was speaking French in a syrupy slur and using his hands to illustrate whatever impassioned argument he was making. Kimiko couldn’t really blame her. He was handsome, with a soft gaze and a wiry, impish sort of mouth. Under the blinking Christmas lights, he looked like everyone she’d ever known and no one she’d ever met, somehow simultaneously comfortingly familiar and strikingly unusual. 

Kimiko propped her pool stick against the sticky floor and leaned her weight against it, inspecting him. As though he could feel her eyes on his back, he turned, meeting her gaze across the room. His smile widened when she wordlessly tilted her head toward the pool table, one brow cocked into her hairline. 

He pivoted, murmuring something to the bartender, who nodded in frowning acquiescence. And then he was making his way toward her in a slow, slinky gait. Everything about him was unhurried, somewhat drowsy. 

“Do you play?” He asked. 

Kimiko shook her head. 

He tilted his head charmingly, like a dog with a bone. “ _Non_? It’s simple.”

Kimiko listened, feigning ignorance as he rattled off the rules. For some reason, she found herself leaning into his gravitational pull, perhaps against her better judgement. His lilting accent was soft, curved up at the edges like a grin. Most men in his position had a brusque, pandering way about them, but this one took his time to explain the intricacies of the game, as though a round of pool in a dive bar in Bushwick was the most important thing that had ever happened. 

Once he was finished, Kimiko nodded slowly, as though digesting the information. She wasn’t going to make a wager this round, of course. He let her go first and she took aim, sinking the cue ball in the far right pocket. 

Kimiko huffed in her usual show of irritation. 

“Try again,” he said, retrieving the ball and rolling it back toward her. His gentle tone almost made her feel guilty for what she was about to do.

She pressed her tongue between her teeth and snapped one eye shut, this time making more of an effort to line up the shot. She still missed, but the edge of the cue ball clipped the solid seven and inched it just shy of the pocket. 

Kimiko straightened, grinning faintly. 

“Very good, _mon coeur,_ ” he said. She knew enough rudimentary French to understand its meaning and her heart thrummed at his airy delivery, the slight tilt of his head. 

The rest of the round happened in much of the same way. She gained slow momentum, making a point to successfully hit around a third of her shots so as to avoid suspicion. Each time she sunk one, his smile was so warm that it knotted her stomach with guilt. Eventually, there were four balls left — two of her solids, one of his stripes, and the eight ball. If Kimiko was a lesser swindler, she might have hesitated when he drifted his fingers over her elbow and murmured, “A little higher, like this _,_ ”, his breath a warm current over her shoulder. 

But she wasn’t, and so she aimed too far right and clipped the edge of the eight ball with just enough force to knock it into the corner pocket. She turned to him with a practiced quirk in her brow and a little pout in her lip. 

“Ah.” He pulled the eight ball out of the pocket, a placating grin twitching at the edges of his mouth. “It’s okay, _mon coeur_. Try again.” 

Kimiko paused. This was an unexpected development. She had never experienced a situation where her opponent actually _rejected_ their own victory, and she wasn’t sure how to proceed. 

The man, apparently interpreting her hesitation as confusion, repositioned the eight ball back on the table. “The eight ball is last. After everything else is gone, see?” He turned to her, his open face so blithe and unassuming that she felt her own expression soften in turn. 

At length, Kimiko shook her head and returned the eight ball to the pocket. When he tossed her a sideways glance, one brow raised, she shrugged, as though to say, _fair is fair._

“Another round, then?” 

Kimiko reached into her pocket and pulled out a crisp twenty. She balanced it on the edge of the table and then turned back to him, holding up two fingers. 

“Double or nothing?” 

Kimiko nodded.

The man paused, his dark eyes searching her face. For a moment, she was sure he was about to call her bluff. She had never met anyone with such an open face; his expressions registered with startling clarity, like peering through a window. 

And then he reached into his wallet and lay a twenty flat over hers, smoothing it out under his thumb. “ _Bonne chance,”_ he murmured cheekily. He gestured toward the table. “Ladies first.” 

Kimiko spent a moment assessing the table wryly, positioning her pool stick between her forefinger and thumb, the chalky tip just barely edging against the cue ball. And then she drew her elbow back and, in a swift propulsion, clipped two of her solids into the far left pocket. She peeked at him through her lashes and found him watching her placidly, his lips parted in a breathless huff of amusement. 

“Clever girl,” he murmured fondly. 

She stepped back and watched him take his turn, his cropped head bent toward the table. Her gaze snagged on the lean curve of his biceps, his movements sharp and precise, unostentatious yet commanding all the same. 

“I won’t go easy on you this time, you know.” Her breath caught in her throat when he tossed her an impish grin over his shoulder. 

Kimiko smirked, planting one hand flat on her cocked hip. She’d dealt with countless variations on the same theme of man, but none like him, who smiled as easily as running water and looked at her as though she was something worth noticing. 

He told her his name was Serge but that most everyone called him Frenchie. If he expected her to respond to him, he didn’t say so, though she could see the question in his eyes. She felt illogically compelled to tell him about everything she’d ever done, right up to the moment their paths converged at a pool table in a dive bar. The prospect of their game eventually ending nagged like a dull toothache. 

They were evenly-matched and, true to his word, he didn’t go easy on her, gently chiding her when she missed and laughing at her half-hearted glares. Soon, they each had one ball left, plus the eight ball. Frenchie lined up his shot and then hesitated, fixing her with an earnest look. “The eight ball is my favorite,” he said suddenly.

Kimiko tilted her head in question. 

“It’s the unlucky one for most of the game, right up until the end. Then it becomes the most important.” He grinned toothily, looking boyish. “I like that.” 

He turned back to the table and she spent a long moment watching him in quiet wonder. He was such a thoughtful sort of man, and when he fixed the full force of his attention on her, she got the sense that he was observing her not passively, but fully, as though saving the memory for later.

Kimiko reached into her purse and spent a moment rooting around in it until she eventually found a pen and a crumpled Post-It note. She could feel him watching her as she scrawled out her note and then held it out toward him. 

_I like that too._

Frenchie plucked the note from her hand and spent a long moment looking at it, his thumb tracing a repetitive pattern back and forth over the paper. His expression was reverent. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought he was inspecting a painting at an art gallery, his brow drawn low, lips pursed slightly in concentration.

And then he folded it into a neat little square and placed it into his pocket carefully, as though he was handling something delicate. 

“I hope you don’t mind, _mon coeur._ ”

Kimiko shook her head. She found that she didn’t mind at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> A short little one-shot while I work on a longer idea. I was thinking I'd like to write a collection of unconnected one-shots about these two — little snapshots of domesticity and happiness with virtually no stakes, because I am so, so soft for them. Let me know if you'd like that. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
